The European Comission’s Eurostat conference 'SmartStatistics4SmartCities' was held in Greece on 5-6 October. The aim was to raise awareness about the importance of building sustainable partnerships between official statistics, municipalities, academic institutions, citizens and businesses. Among the invited speakers were PASCAL Associate Ilpo Laitinen and Konstantinos Ampountolas from the UBDC, University of Glagow.

The purpose of this PASCAL Special  Interest Group (SIG)  is to examine the interface between PASCAL and  the public policy sectors. While this topic is a very broad, it cuts across sectors and issues, including innovative resource sharing and the role of institutions of higher education, and those organizations that develop policy. It includes the development of intercultural activity. In this third issue, the themes of regionalism and the changing role of universities are considered.

PASCAL Universities' Regional Engagment programme (PURE) has been a highly visible project in the Helsinki metropolitan region. It belonged to the official research strategy and programme of the city of Helsinki from 2011-2015.